Awareness and witnessing 

Anything you can do that keeps you aware and witnessing your suffering (as opposed to being your suffering), keeps a sliver of light open that shows the way out of the prison. Journaling and free-writing are amazing tools for this.

Journaling and free-writing

In the 18th Tale in her book Eat, Pray, Love,  Elizabeth Gilbert describes how in her most private notebook she talks to the Voice she first encountered on her bathroom floor, sobbing at 3 am and praying to God for help for the first time in her life.  She says, "I've found that voice again [and again] in times of code-orange distress, and ... the best way for me to reach it is [through] written conversation.”

Journaling has been my most powerful tool and the only one I've used consistently for my entire journey so far. All the other tools and modalities come and go in my life, but my journal is always there. 

Journaling does two things for the journal-writer, at least. First, it's a listening friend who never judges, condemns, or gives advice. Second, it holds up a mirror for us to see our own patterns and behaviors. In both of these ways, a journal acts as a Witnessing Presence, holding space for our psyches to heal and re-organize themselves bit by bit. 

Free writing, even more than journaling, is a way of listening to the parts of us that aren't easy to access by other means. And since our most deeply hidden parts are the ones holding onto our deepest fears and limiting beliefs, it pays to listen to them. This short post on The Power of Freewriting explains how to get started with free writing. 

For another example and with video instruction, The Crappy Childhood Fairy shares a daily free-writing practice combined with meditation, which she describes as a tool to: "help calm stress and increase mental focus -- a great boost for healing brain dysregulation and other symptoms of Childhood PTSD and Complex PTSD."

Involve your body

The good thing about unloading your tension onto paper is that it engages you on several levels, not just verbally but also somatically (somatically means "via your body").

Beware if you find you have a tendency to keep re-running your stories verbally to anyone who will listen. Talking about your troubles, if you find you're doing it repeatedly without any somatic support, might be making things worse because the brain parts that activate when you're very distressed are pre-verbal.

Which means that talking by itself does not reach them. Talking does, however, reinforce the looping thoughts - so not helpful if you tend to find yourself re-running the same distress story over and over. 

EFT is an excellent way to support yourself somatically (somatically means "via the body," and since The Body Keeps the Score on your most deeply held beliefs and traumas, the only way to reach them is via the body) is with EFT.